Did a Rebooting The News with Jay last night. It was done in a studio at NYU, which has advantages (you can hear us well) but also disadvantatges. I hear the podcast ends at exactly 45 minutes, cutting me off in the middle of a sentence. That really sucks because the last few sentences were the best. (Just kidding, but we seriously have to get this under control, we run a loose ship and intend to keep it that way.) It's been worse, once I lost an entire podcast due to a technical mistake. So shit happens. It'll be interesting to do it next week when I'm back in Calif.

There's a certain amount of giddy in the media about the expected tablet announcement from Apple tomorrow. There's this idea that Steve will save the free and professional press, because he values a free and professional press. Uncle Rex Hammock spills cold water on the idea. Remember what Doc Searls said about software developers when Steve returned to Apple in 1997. Can you imagine how the free and professional press feels when Uncle Steve and his minions fail to approve their writing because it isn't sufficiently flattering to Apple? Somehow this is a loop back to the lesson of this week's RBTN. Perhaps it's better to accept low fidelity in return for the ability to finish a sentence -- the way you want to finish it. Or at least let the mistakes you make be your own.

Meantime, Uncle Barack Obama is making those of us who supported him really sorry for having done so. Freeze budgets? Robert Reich says that could be bad for the economy. Paul Krugman isn't so reserved. Brad DeLong says his middle name should be "Herbert Hoover." My guess is that it's a lie, he doesn't plan to freeze the budget, any more than Uncle George W Bush meant to get us out of Iraq. He just wants to take the high ground from the Repooobs next election cycle, to deprive them of what he feels might be a very potent soundbite. Either way, pity us. I can't imagine we'd ever elect a president that we'd have higher hopes for than Obama. If he betrays us, well, who won't?

People ask what I think of Google's new synthetic feeds. Great idea, I'll subscribe in my own aggregator. Oh you say I have to use Google Reader? Not my cup of tea.